Celebrating the 17th birthday of McKinsey’s landmark strategy paper as a guide for today’s marketing service firms. It was 17 years ago this month that McKinsey & Company published a... Read more
10 March, 2014
How to create your own marketing micro-profession Before getting involved in advertising, I had planned on attending medical school. A lot of my pre-med training focused on establishing a very... Read more
21 September, 2012
My New Year’s resolution for 2012 is to stop working for free. And if you run your own advertising or creative services firm, I hope you’ll join me. This would not seem like such an outrageous... Read more
18 January, 2012
Last week I read a great op-ed piece in The Boston Globe by Alex Poulos called “Mad Men of the Future.” He makes several excellent observations. But overall, the article paints a pretty dreary... Read more
24 June, 2011
I'm often asked if brands should use traditional or social media. The question is often phrased as if the two are mutually exclusive and you need to be on one camp or the other. But social media vs.... Read more
28 October, 2010
A prospective client recently contacted me because he heard that The Duffy Agency is “one of Europe’s best social media agencies.” At the risk of losing his business, I had to tell him we are... Read more
16 March, 2010
Why drive-to-web works The winner of the populist vote in this year’s Super Bowl ad war is the Betty White Snickers commercial. According to the 2010 USA Today Ad Meter, the commercial... Read more
11 February, 2010
Four years into the social media surge and I'm still not convinced that many of the large agency networks get it. The same way they didn't get branding in the late 80's, or the internet in the early... Read more
14 January, 2010
Can your brand benefit from the wildly viral "Staring You Media"?I am not a fan of Sweden's "voluntary" TV-tax. However, I am a big fan of the campaign they have launched to induce me to pay it. Why?... Read more
24 November, 2009
Big ideas win big at Cannes. Will advertising ever be the same? The global slowdown in the ad biz took center stage at every talk and seminar this year at Cannes Lions. You could also see it in... Read more
17 July, 2009